“Just what did I see?” muttered Mboga. “Just what did I see?”
Fokin, irritated, moved away from the wall. The black shadow of the rotor vane crept across his face.
“Aha!” Mboga said loudly. “A strange shadow!”
He threw down the carbine and with a running jump he leapt onto the wall. “Please!” he said from the roof.
On the roof, beyond the helicopter fuselage, as if in a shop window, the things were neatly arranged-the butter, pack number E-9, the shoes, a neatly folded sheet, a pocket microelectrometer in a plastic case, four neutron batteries, a ball of dried vitriplast, and a pair of sunglasses.
“Here are my shoes,” said Tanya. “And my sunglasses. I dropped them into the river yesterday.”
“Ye-es,” Fokin said, and looked around carefully.
Komov seemed to come to himself. “Ryu!” he quickly shouted. “I have to get hold of the Sunflower immediately. Fokin, Tanya, make a photograph of this display! I’ll be back in half an hour.”
He jumped off the roof and started walking quickly, then broke into a run, heading down the street toward the base. Ryu followed him without saying anything.
“What’s going on?” yelled Fokin.
Mboga squatted down, got out his small pipe, puffed at it unhurriedly, and said, “They’re people, Boris. Even animals can steal things, but only people can bring back what they have stolen.”
Fokin moved back and sat on the wheel of the helicopter.
Komov returned alone. He seemed very excited, and in a high-pitched metallic voice he ordered them to break camp immediately. Fokin started showering him with questions. He demanded explanations. Then Komov recited in the same metallic voice: “By order of the captain of the starship Sunflower: Within three hours the meteorological base and laboratory, and the archeological camp will be dismantled; all cybernetic systems will be shut down; and all personnel, including Atmosphere Physicist Waseda, will return on board the Sunflower.” Fokin submitted out of sheer surprise and set to work with unusual diligence.
In two hours the helicopter made eight trips, and the cargo robots trampled down a broad road through the grass from the base to the boat. Of the base, only empty construction sites remained—all three systems of construction robots had been herded inside the storehouse and completely deprogrammed.
At six o’clock in the morning local time, when the east had begun to glow with the green dawn, the exhausted humans gathered by the boat, and here, at last, Fokin lost patience.
“Well, all right,” he began in an irate hoarse whisper. “You relayed us orders, Gennady, and we have carried them out honestly. But I would like to find out at last how come we’re leaving here! Why?” he yelped suddenly in a falsetto, picturesquely throwing up his hands. Everyone jumped, and Mboga dropped the pipe from his teeth. “Why? We look for Brothers in Reason for three hundred years, and run off with our tails between our legs as soon as we’ve discovered them? The best minds of humanity—”
“Good grief,” said Tanya, and Fokin shut up.
“I don’t understand a thing,” he said then in a hoarse whisper.
“Do you think, Boris, that we are capable of representing the best minds of humanity?” asked Mboga.
Komov muttered gloomily, “We’ve sure messed things up here! We burned out a whole field, trampled crops, shot guns. And around the base!” He waved his hand.
“But how could we know?” Ryu said guiltily.
“Yes,” said Mboga. “We made many mistakes. But I hope they’ve understood us. They’re civilized enough for that.”
“What sort of a civilization is this!” said Fokin. “Where are the machines? Where are the tools? Where are the cities?”
“Shut up, Boris,” said Komov. “‘Machines, cities’—just open your eyes! Do we know how to fly on birds? Have we bred animals that produce honey? Has our last mosquito been long exterminated? ‘Machines.’…”
“A biological civilization,” said Mboga.
“What?” asked Fokin.
“A biological civilization. Not machines, but selection, genetics, animal training. Who knows what forces they’ve mastered? And who can say whose civilization is superior?”
“Imagine, Boris,” said Tanya,
Fokin twirled his mustache furiously.
“And we’re clearing out,” said Komov, “because none of us has the right to take upon himself the responsibility of first contact.” Oh, am I sorry to leave! he thought. I don’t want to go—I want to search them out, to meet them, to talk, to see what they’re like. Can this really have happened at last? Not some brainless lizards, not some sort of leeches, but a real human race. A whole world, a whole history… Did you have wars and revolutions? Which did you get first, steam or electricity? And what is the meaning of life? And might I perhaps have something to read? The first essay in the comparative history of intelligent species. And we have to go. Oh boy, oh boy, do I ever feel like staying! But on Earth there has already for fifty years been a Commission on Contacts, which for all those years has been studying the comparative psychology of fish and ants, and arguing over in what language to say the first “uh.” Only now you can’t laugh at them any more. I wonder whether any of them had foreseen the possibility of a biological civilization. Probably. What haven’t they foreseen?
“Gorbovsky is a man of phenomenal penetration,” said Mboga.
“Yes,” said Tanya. “It’s frightening to think what old Boris could have done if he’d had a gun.”
“Why single me out?” Fokin said angrily, “What about you? Who was it that went swimming with a hacker?”
“We’re all a fine bunch,” Ryu said with a sigh.
Komov looked at his watch. “Takeoff in twenty minutes,” he announced. “Stations, please.”
Mboga hesitated in the airlock and looked back. The white star EN 23 had already risen over the green plain. It smelled of moist grass, warm earth, fresh honey. “Yes,” said Mboga. “Really a planet with all the conveniences. Why did we ever think nature could have created anything like it?”
Part Four: What You Will Be Like
18. Defeat
“You’re going to the island of Shumshu,” Fischer announced.
“Where is that?” Sidorov asked gloomily.
“The northern Kurils. Your flight leaves today at twenty-two thirty. A combined cargo-passenger run from Novosibirsk to Port Provideniya.”
They planned on testing embryomechs under varied conditions. Mostly the Institute did work for spacemen, and consequently thirty research groups out of forty-seven had been sent to the Moon and to various planets. The remaining seventeen were to work on Earth.
“All right,” Sidorov said slowly. He had hoped that they would assign him a space group, even if only a lunar one. It seemed to him that he had a good chance, for it had been a long time since he had felt as well as he had recently. He was in excellent shape, and had continued to hope up to the last minute. But for some reason Fischer had decided otherwise, and Sidorov couldn’t even talk to him man to man, since some glum-faced strangers were sitting in the office. So this is how Pm going to grow old, thought Sidorov. “All right,” he repeated calmly.
“Severokurilsk already knows,” Fischer said. “The exact site of the experiment will be decided in Baikovo.”
“Where’s that?”
“On the island of Shumshu. It’s Shumshu’s administrative center.” Fischer hooked his fingers together and started looking out the window. “Sermus is staying on Earth too,” he said. “He’s going to the Sahara.”